The Yockeyites vs. My Native People

So Dan's parents and younger sister are visiting, and we've had fun going shopping and replacing our saggy loveseat with an actual couch and chatting. It's gotten me thinking though about how Dan's family is different from my people... Not in a bad way. Just the kind of way that makes me think about life.


I'm the oldest of five, so when my family came to visit in May it was a lot noisier, a lot of chatting from my teenage sisters, laughing, goofing around, and general silliness. (It was hilarious taking them to the married ward at church that Sunday- my parents paid attention, but my foster brother played a rubix cube the whole time, and my sisters goofed off and my brothers colored.) There are still a lot of young kids (I'm one of many, many grandkids, and grandkids are still coming) and that sort; since I'm the first one of my generation of our family to get married, it's kind of a new step for everyone and we're all still adjusting to it.


Dan's family, however, is in a different stage in life. He's the middle child of three, and his older sister has been married for six years and his younger sister has graduated college. They're humorous and funny, but at the same time a little more reserved than my family- and definitely not as loud! Since they've been here we've done a lot of talking, but also a lot of just sitting, which is kind of cool in its own way, just kind of hanging out and talking about stuff here and here. It's interesting to hear the stories they tell and the places they've all been.


Here's a good example of how different our families are:

Thanksgiving at my house usually involves my family, my grandparents, and at minimum one of my dad's siblings and that whole family- so at least like 15 people. More often than not there are more. It's loud, rambunctious, kids everywhere, and the food takes all day to make- jello, jello salad, the turkey, stuffing, mounds of potatoes, at least one kind of veggie, gallons of gravy, and lots and lots of dishes to wash. Once everyone is done, kids start running around, inside and outside and up the stairs and down the stairs, and adults are talking and breaking up a fight here or an argument there, and the teenagers are reading books or chatting. 

Thanksgiving at Dan's house involves his parents, his younger sister (if she's not off in some other country), his older sister and her husband and son, and his grandma. We all sat around the table with room to spare for each of us, and it was rather quiet at times as people ate. Dishes were all put in the dishwasher except for a couple of larger dishes, and then we all sat around and let it digest while looking at Black Friday ads.


HUGE difference. Whenever I'm with Dan's family I always enjoy it a lot... It's quieter, and I'm pretty sure I won't feel exhausted by the time they leave my house from visiting.... But at the same time, I think I'll always gravitate towards the huge family scene. Poor Dan- he holds his own, but I'm sure my family leaves him crying himself to sleep at night sometimes!

If You Give Your Husband a Haircut...

(It must be summer- he hasn't shaved since before church on Sunday)

...then you're bound to make a mistake here or there. And they're usually large. And very noticeable. Like a shaved spot the size of... Alaska.


Ok, it's not that big, but I'm absolutely mortified.


I don't use scissors when I cut hair... I always cut myself with said scissors, and it takes me over an hour to cut hair that way. Since Dan's hair doesn't sit like a normal person's hair, (it sticks straight up and parting it is out of the question, period,) I just use the razor. I'll use a shorter guard for the back of his head, and a guard that's about a half in longer for the top of his head. Then I'll blend together so it doesn't look like I gave him a bowl cut. Last night I was struggling to get the sides of his head to match (that's how wacky his hair is) and I guess I took the guard off because I was done with it (when I really wasn't) and I saw that I'd missed a spot so I reached around his head and buzz-buzz! I fixed it!


.....until I turned his head back around.........


I wouldn't even feel as bad, not even close, because it's summer and all, but I gave him the haircut because his family is coming to visit on Friday, and I didn't want him to look like a shaggy dog... So now his parents and sister will walk through the door and they'll see him with shorter hair than normal and a shaved spot. A large one. And his hair is very dark and his skin is very white, and so the picture doesn't show that in the light the spot like glows or something...


I'm so embarrassed.....

Freedom!

So the semester is FINALLY over! Husband is done with his business cluster and I finally get to reclaim him from his schoolwork. I passed my juries (I think) and the rest of my classes- no idea what grades I got, but pretty sure nothing lower than a B. Now, while Husband is at work, I get to experience what it's like to be at home alone for 8 hours a day. What on earth am I going to do with myself? Hm...


I could....
1. Read a book (if I even remember what that is)
2. Clean up the corner of the living room and actually finish off a bunch of the crafts I started
3. Go to campus and practice organ or trumpet
4. Work on my story (which I haven't even looked at in the last... long time)
5. Clean the house (especially since relatives are coming in... three days? Yikes!)
6. Catch up on my journal
7. Catch the mouse that lives under our stove and dishwasher  (That's Husband's job)
8. Practice making homemade rolls and bread
9. Eat Otter Pops (I'm seriously addicted to those things)
10. Make wedding cards for the bajilliondy friends who are getting married in the next two months (and for those friends who got married recently... like last January...)
11. Write thank-you cards for everyone who gave us gifts at our wedding
12. Go to the temple
13. Wash my hair more than twice a week (it won't know what to do with itself, it'll be so clean)
14. Play computer games (because that's productive...)
15. Learn a new skill (although I have no idea what that new skill would be)
16. Get the rest of our wedding pictures printed
17. Exercise more


So that's kind of a lot of stuff to do... and I know I could come up with more. And that's just the stuff I could do without Husband's help... Together we could do twice that! Haha!


No, really, though... I'm super excited to have time to do things that I want to do. It was so frustrating to me during the semester to not have time to work on my story or even take an extra 10 or 15 minutes to stay in the shower long enough to wash my hair (especially at the end of the semester). I always had something to do, something to work on, somewhere to be, things to decide... But now I can have seven weeks to just sit around and do whatever!


So now I'm going to go have an Otter Pop (or six) and do... whatever. Hooray for summer!

Juries

As a music major you are required every semester to play for the teachers in your respective area of music (for me it's all the brass teachers, since I play trumpet) and they'll determine whether you pass or fail your lessons. It's a very stressful time of the semester- for a music major, it's worse than any exam. It's a panel of teachers that determine your fate, who tell you if you were awesome or if you were terrible, or whether you've progressed or whether you just look absolutely frightened. (That was my critique last semester- "You need to stand up and put your feet about shoulder-width apart. We won't eat you.")


And as if that wasn't enough torture, they call those performance exams "juries".


Seriously? A jury? "You are on trial to see if you are an acceptable member of the music program. Please, step forward."


Juries is a terrible word. My pianist suggested that they call them "promotionals". Isn't that a nicer way of putting it? If you pass then you're promoted on to the next class, and if you fail then you just didn't get the promotion. If you pass then you leave feeling very proud and excited and you want to call your family and friends and brag about it on facebook. If you don't pass, then you are bummed for a while and you keep trying, but you don't feel like your head is going to get chopped off.


My jury promotional is tomorrow. I've had my music for about a month. I'm pretty sure I'm clear of the guillotine, but I hope they appreciate my performance. I've worked my tush off the last few weeks...

Stop Lounging and Get in the Water!

I had an interesting trumpet lesson today. By the time it was over, my instructor turned to me and told me that he was immensely excited about how much I had progressed this last week. He said the five weeks or so before he hadn't noticed much, but now that I have a deadline he can tell that I'm working harder to play my solo better. He expressed his desire for me to continue, to maybe even change my major back to a performance (BM), so that I would progress as far as I could. This instigated a discussion that lasted a half an hour after my lesson had technically ended, and we talked about what was going on, behaviors of people on and off campus and in the church, and things like that. What it came down to, at least for me, was the dedication and the commitment that he thought seemed to be lacking in me. He told me, (and I'm grateful for him pointing this out), that it seems like while I know I'm talented, I seem to be resting on that talent; that I've figured out that I can procrastinate everything and get away with it with a pretty decent job rather than an exceptional one.


And I have to admit this is true... I probably do rest on my talent more than I should. I can count on one hand the number of times I practiced for the quintet concert that's tonight, and while there are a couple little spots in our music that I know need to be worked out, I haven't done anything about it because I can get away with a good enough job. (And if they ever read this, they'll probably be kind of upset with me... Phooey.) So what my teacher encouraged me to do was to figure out what I'm dedicated to, and fully commit to it. He thought that by being a BA, I was sort of leaving myself too many options, and not making myself commit to any one of those. When I argued that I really do care about all of those things, like music composition and writing and all those things, he simply said that I don't have to remove those options, but rather if I commit to one wholeheartedly, my influence and dealings with the others would increase as well.


Pretty much he verbally smacked me upside the head (in a very polite, 'I really want to see you excel kind of a lot' kind of way) and told me that instead of sitting back and dipping my toes in the pool, I need to get in the water and swim. That doesn't mean diving in the deep end, but I need to get in the water, try it out, and dedicate myself to what I want to do. My teacher brought up the poem 'Invictus', which says "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul" and he says that there was a general authority who countered that by saying that Christ is the master of your fate and the captain of your soul; my teacher has come to the conclusion that is it through Christ that you become the master of your fate. Because of Christ, we have the ability to choose where we want to go and what we want to do.


So even though I'm not changing back to a BM, I kind of really want to show him that I can be dedicated, and in a way he has opened doors for me as a musician that I never really thought about looking into before. I want to commit to being a professional, regardless of my degree, and I want to learn the things that I know he can teach me.


And the same can go to you! Commit to something! Is it a talent, a goal, a dream? Commit to doing what it is that you need to do to get there. Don't put yourself down and think that you'll never get there because you're supposed to just be a stay-at-home mom or just be the breadwinner of the family. Be all that you can be. Jump in that pool, swim, and enjoy the water!

(Boy, I've gotten philosophical over the last few months...)

Yockeyite Love

Mini-craft post! Yeah!

When Husband and I got married, I knew that it was important to make sure we knew we loved each other- to keep the love alive! I know, I know- we haven't even been married a year! Why am I worrying about this?


Because it's important to start NOW if you want to develop lovey dovey habits later in life, that's why! :)
(Gasp! Cheesy smiley face!)

People have been telling us that the same idea goes for things like how you will act around your children when they come, how you will treat them, how you will treat each other later in life when it's even crazier than it is now, everything!


So this is one way I thought of to keep the Yockeyite love alive:

 

A love notes box! Woo! I took one of those mini cereal boxes and carefully pulled it apart until it was flat. Then I traced it on my scrapbook paper of choice, made marks where the folds where, and glued it together! A little string and a piece of scrapbook label and shazam! There it is! The little hearts are like the mailbox flag, if I put a note in there for him, I put the little blue heart in there, and if he puts one in for me then he puts the pink heart up. SO EASY to make!


Seriously, I LOVE finding a note in that box. It's one of the best things EVER!! And I love putting notes there for Husband.


Another thing we have hanging in our house is this:

 

(Woo, that's fuzzy picture... Oops!)

I framed a bunch of our favorite wedding cards! They have cute sayings on them. And it's up on the wall where we can see it really well. I love it!


So whether you're in a relationship or married, KEEP THE (Yockeyite) LOVE ALIVE! Woo!!

Independence Day/Fourth of July

There are people all over town setting off fireworks. We can hear constant popping and whistles as they explode and send sparks of color all around. All we had were little poppers that we threw into the street, but there was someone in the park and someone down the street who had these little fountain fireworks that would spew colors. They were so pretty! We're getting some next year. I wish I'd known about them, and then we'd be setting them off ourselves! We spent the long weekend in Montana with some other Yockeyites, helping move a piano and unpack boxes and watch an unruly 3-year-old, and it was so much fun! I would post pictures, but I forgot to charge the camera batteries all weekend (because I'm lame) so... no pictures.....


If you are an American, then you need to read the Declaration of Independence. When was the last time you did? It's actually not that long. I'll even include a link: Declaration of Independence. It's so important that we understand why our nation is here- most people don't think about it, don't know about it, or don't care about it. Our schools in general don't teach very much about it or the things in the Constitution. Take a minute and be a patriot.


"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness... for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." -Declaration of Independence

Happy Independence Day/Fourth of July!